N.M. Dem Party Chairman Brian Colón says Gripgate is politically motivated

In an Albuquerque Journal Op-Ed today, Democratic Party of New Mexico Chairman Brian Colón says political motivations are at play in the federal investigation into whether there was a pay-to-play deal between the Richardson administration and CDR Financial.

To make his case, Colón goes back to the firing of U.S. Attorney David Iglesias in December 2006 as evidence that the U.S. attorney’s office is politically compromised.

A report last September by the Justice Department found the Iglesias firing was due to complaints about him by Republican elected officials.

As NMI’s Trip Jennings reported:

Ultimately, the report concluded that Iglesias was removed because of complaints to the Department and the White House by Senator Domenici and other New Mexico Republican political officials, not for reasons given publicly. All other reasons offered after Iglesias’s removal — “that he was an ‘absentee landlord,’ that he delegated too much authority to his First Assistant, and that he was an underperformer — were after-the-fact rationalizations that did not actually contribute to his removal.”

Colón says that report found that the removal of Iglesias was “politically motivated”:

When Iglesias refused to wrongfully prosecute cases where there was no evidence of “voter fraud,” high-ranking members of the state Republican Party asked Karl Rove to remove him from office. Iglesias said he felt that then-Rep. Heather Wilson had pressured him to rush the Courthouse Construction Kickback case in an October 2006 phone conversation. Iglesias lost his job in December. Based on these and other allegations of attempted misuse of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the report found that the firing of Iglesias was politically motivated.

Colón then fast forwards to the current U.S. Attorney’s office — which is still staffed with Bush appointees — and through a timeline of events makes the suggestion that the current Richardson/CDR investigation is politically motivated.

First, he says, a number of witnesses were interviewed — two of whom told him that they told the grand jury the award of the contract to CDR was done by the book.

Then, Richardson’s office turned over the documents requested by the feds, and there was “no smoking gun,” he says.

Then, “suddenly,” the assistant U.S. attorney was replaced on Nov. 1. Then on Nov. 21 Richardson was nominated to be commerce secretary. At that point, Colón said, the new assistant U.S. attorney was at a fork in the road.

One, she could wrap up the case and present it to the grand jury in December. Two, she could ask a federal judge to extend the one-year term of the grand jury that had already heard all the testimony and evidence, and still possibly wrap up the case in time for confirmation hearings.

Or, she could convene a new grand jury, which he says she did. Colón says that starting over with a new grand jury will lead to bias on the part of the grand jury through a lack of complete information, and that it will drag on for months:

Starting over with a new grand jury would allow the prosecutor to put on a witness to summarize all the previous testimony and leave out any information that might damage chances of an indictment. Further, the new prosecutor would not have to re-call witnesses who said there was nothing wrong when CDR was hired by the state. Worst of all, a new grand jury meant the investigation would go on for months instead of being completed before confirmation hearings.

Colón says this “deliberate prosecutorial decision forced Richardson to decide whether he would ask the new president to indefinitely hold up his nomination while the grand jury investigation started anew or withdraw. To his credit, the governor … chose to withdraw his nomination.”

Colón then flat out says the prosecutor’s decision to convene a new grand jury was politically motivated.

It should be noted that Colón is good friends with Richardson, and served as treasurer for Richardson’s Moving America Forward Foundation.